As mobile telephones proliferate, and as mobile telephone networks develop, various digital communication services are being introduced, including various data communications services. Many of the data communication services are packet-based data services used to communicate audio content, video content, including streaming audio and video content.
Until recently most conventional streaming media services, such as those available in the home or office, have been delivered via a wire or cable and enjoy a highly consistent transmission quality. In contrast, mobile telephone devices are subjected to use under varying radio environments which results in highly varying transmission quality and thus highly varying data service performance to the end user.
One challenge to those designing mobile telephone devices is to design the telephone devices to provide the desired data quality even when the user is using the telephone device in challenging and changing radio environments. Further, wireless network operators want users of their network to use telephone devices that provide adequate communication quality in all radio environments to ensure that the user has a satisfactory experience using the wireless network.
There are a wide variety of telephone devices capable of receiving audio and video content. With the proliferation of mobile telephone devices, many designs of telephones have evolved. The different designs of telephone devices result in different performance characteristics for each telephone device. Various design characteristics may impact the quality of the data services provided by a telephone device. For example, the radio front-end of a telephone device, which drives, in part, the radiated performance (a device's ability to receive and transmit radio signals) of the device may positively or negatively impact the quality of data communications in various radio environments. Another factor may be the device's capability to cancel interfering radio signals from wanted radio signals in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and thereby improve the quality of communications. Other design factors include (a) the performance of the device's digital signal processor, (b) the design of the device's operating system and associated applications including the handling of TCP/IP communications. As a result, the many different mobile telephone devices have varying performance characteristics due to their design. Thus, different telephone devices operating in the same radio environment may provide different qualities of reception and presentation of audio-video content.
A challenge to mobile telephone device manufacturers, and to wireless carriers, is how to evaluate the relative performance of mobile telephone devices for the various packet data services. Another challenge is to objectively compare the communication quality of different mobile telephone devices in a consistent manner. In addition, as the viewing of streaming audio-video content on mobile telephones by consumers becomes ubiquitous, it is ever more important to ensure the quality of reception and play of streaming media content.
A system for testing a telephone device's reception and play of streaming media should (1) generate quality scores that correlate well with human-perceived quality of the playback; (2) be applicable for use in testing all mobile devices that have the capability to play audio-video content; (3) measure the quality of both audio and video output by the telephone device; (4) be easy enough to be used by a test technician with a few hours training; (5) not require custom software or other modifications to the telephone device-under-test; and/or (6) be capable of being used in a moving vehicle.
One or more of these objectives may be provided by one or more embodiments of the present invention.